I met him in 1989, when I was a very young A1C. He was filming a commercial for the USAF at McClellan AFB in Sacramento. Zoomed onto the flightline in a silver-blue 'vette. After the filming, the Colonel I worked for introduced me to him as one of the newest members of the USAF. He pretty much gave me a death-glare, growled and stomped away. He scared the crap out of me. I have to find the pictures I got that day - they were pretty great, actually.

Try the scene in Hachi where the widow comes back to town to find the old dog still waiting for his master at the train station...

Personally I liked Yeager's portrayal in the movie "The Right Stuff", but it does seem like they certainly left out certain personality traits of his that make him less of a "role model". Still bad ass, just not exactly the coolest guy to meet if you've got boobs.

Silverstaff:RocketRay: I know a few people who have met him and unfortunately he's a grade A sexist douchebag. After one of these PR sound barrier anniversary flights a female lieutenant saluted and told him she'd show him to the officer's club. He barked at another officer to get him a "real lieutenant" to show him the way.

Oh, I've heard lots of stories about him being an arrogant, sexist, generally insufferable prick. He basically has a lot of behaviors and attitudes that were perfectly acceptable in the 1940's, and he's not going to change them to the modern day.

That aside he had incredible accomplishments as a pilot, and is worthy of respect for that. Just don't think of him as a perfect, idealized hero or some kind of role model for a personal life.

This. Why do people expect those who do extraordinary things to conform to some PC checklist? I've met a few of the Type "A" people who do the sorts of things Yeager did. They would be considered assholes by many....but they're not going away, and we'd be poorer for it if they did.

They were able to verify that Yeager broke through the speed of sound because the plane's handling and airspeed indicator were behaving with the same peculiarities as Welch's were, two weeks prior when he broke the sound barrier.

/who cares if it was in a dive - it was still going faster than the speed of sound

Dave The Slushy:costermonger: Yeager is almost as famous for being an egomaniacal, arrogant, sexist piece of shiat as he is for breaking the speed of sound. Almost.

Is he also racist? If he is, him and the Duke of Edinburgh (The Queen's hubby for you seperatists) should get fully drunk and the resultant slurs recorded for prosperity.

/At their age, it'll only take a couple.

Pretty much, yeah. There's a bit in his autobiography in which he claims that the reason why there weren't any black astronauts in the sixties is that none of the black candidates could pass the tests. (It's doubly-insulting when, as you might remember from The Right Stuff, the early astronauts were basically "Spam in a can", i.e. they weren't required to do anything except be test subjects (although they insisted on having some control over the spacecraft, and especially with some of the Apollo missions, such as 11 and 13, had to improvise under difficult circumstances).) Here's a list of the African-American astronauts who, unlike Yeager, went into space (except for Ron McNair, who died in the Challenger disaster). Ha, ha! Fark you, Chuck.

rico567:This. Why do people expect those who do extraordinary things to conform to some PC checklist? I've met a few of the Type "A" people who do the sorts of things Yeager did. They would be considered assholes by many....but they're not going away, and we'd be poorer for it if they did.

I don't really care what he's like on a personal level.. He's hardly the only sexist in his generation.

It's the hero worship I can't stand. He did something fairly remarkable in aeronautical history, but for the better part of the 65 years since, he's been deified for it, and nobody has bought the hype or sought to safe guard the lifelong attention it garnered more than Chuck himself. Which is fine, he can be that guy if he wants to be, I guess. It's not hard to find documented cases of his oneupmanship with peers, or his revisionist/inflated views of his role in history. If you care to look, you quickly realize that he's far more concerned with his own legend than being honest.

Where he crossed the line in my books is when Scott Crossfield died. Within a couple days, Yeager publicly said what amounted to "he always was kind of a marginal pilot, unlike me." Thanks to the cult of Yeager, lots of people believed him. Actively trashing other people's legacy in order to bolster your own is unacceptable in a public figure.

It'd be like Neil Armstrong continually taking every opportunity to remind the world that he landed the lunar lander, he was first down the ladder and Buzz was just along for the ride. Armstrong didn't do anything like that, and is worthy of respect, both personal and professional. Yeager doesn't deserve both of those things.

taliesinwi:Oh God, I remember the time I poured into all the variants of that game. There was this one plane, I think was the X-29 (can't remember) that would develop a vicious back-and-forth longitudinal waggle if you took too long to accelerate through Mach 1.1 or tried to maintain that speed. Gave me nightmares.

Actually, that was the X-3 Stiletto in Chuck Yeager's AFT that did that. Damn thing was near impossible to take off in. I usually used the option to just start at 10,000ft.

Even more fun was had when using that Airplane Construction Kit add-on. I would always just crank up a jet's thrust crazy high, and just call it the SR-71, even if I didn't really take the effort to make it accurate. I was young. XD

Daymond42:taliesinwi:Oh God, I remember the time I poured into all the variants of that game. There was this one plane, I think was the X-29 (can't remember) that would develop a vicious back-and-forth longitudinal waggle if you took too long to accelerate through Mach 1.1 or tried to maintain that speed. Gave me nightmares.

Actually, that was the X-3 Stiletto in Chuck Yeager's AFT that did that. Damn thing was near impossible to take off in. I usually used the option to just start at 10,000ft.

Even more fun was had when using that Airplane Construction Kit add-on. I would always just crank up a jet's thrust crazy high, and just call it the SR-71, even if I didn't really take the effort to make it accurate. I was young. XD

Heck, in terms of overpowered custom aircraft in a flight sim. . .

A decade or so ago, I was looking around on the web for add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator. I found lots of vintage warplanes and X-Planes. MiG-15, X-29, F-4 and so on, downloaded them and had fun with them. I saw one that made me do a double take. .. MiG-31 Firefox.

Yeah, the Firefox. Somebody out there made up a model for MS Flight Simulator of the Firefox, cockpit graphics, good 3-D modelling and all. They also gave it the thrust the thing was supposed to have from the books and movie.

A Mach-6 capable fighter. . .well, holy crap. It was more like trying to pilot a soyuz rocket horizontally than anything else. Takeoffs required only minimal thrust, and even then you were fighting to keep it under control. It was clear the flight modelling of MS Flight Simulator 2000 was NOT meant to model hypersonic flight.

Landings were something else entirely. The only way to get airspeed down low enough was to basically dead-stick the whole thing. Cut engines on approach and glide, because the engines were so supercharged that even minimal thrust would have you going too fast for a safe landing on anything but a super-long runway. You could take off in short spaces, but unless you were damn good at that gliding landing, you'd need a runway which could almost accommodate the space shuttle.

As long has he hasn't turned into a total Teabagger dipsh*t in his golden years.

Yeah, because not voting so a socialist farktard approves cancels heroic actions. Sorry, cupcake, Uncle Chuck was VERY conservative, politically, last I saw him, about a decade ago. Incidentally, he is STILL a hero.

I know a few people who have met him and unfortunately he's a grade A sexist douchebag.

True, that. Also, AMAZINGLY intolerant of incompetence, reliance on petty detail, and general failure to get things done. Asked me if I had my pilot's license (at freaking eight.) Apparently, "Not yet, Uncle Chuck" was an acceptable answer. I hope it still works...

Did the faller really go supersonic? I think he fell faster than the speed of sound at sea level, but he was always subsonic in the air which he was falling through. He'd have to go a lot faster at 100,000 feet of altitude to go supersonic.

How do farkers get the science backwards so often? Less air means fewer collisions of molecules, so a sound wave takes longer... hence, it's speed is slower. I probably DO have to mention that last bit, considering the level of scienticianery. *SIGH*

Bomb Head Mohammed:there are plenty of American aviation heroes for you and your kids to choose from. the following should probably not be on it::

Chuck YeagerJohn GlennRandy Duke CunninghamCharles Lindbergh

all were men of very deep personal failings after their aviation heroics were over. Of these, Yeager's is probably the least bad (he's basically an egomaniacal, greedy d-bag with a junior high school -equivalent education), but still.

John Glenn? Someone's been smoking something. If you're talking about that Keating Five scandal, you might want to check your history. He and McCain were cleared.

just_intonation:Completely agree, though I'm sure someone is going to try (or has already -- I haven't read the rest of the comments yet).

The nice thing about a salute is that you can show respect for a person's accomplishments without giving them the opportunity to open their mouth. The old saying is you salute the rank, not the man... which is a perfectly fitting way to deal with people like Gen. Yeager.

I can respect his accomplishments in the cockpit while still acknowledging that he's not a nice person.

whidbey:As long has he hasn't turned into a total Teabagger dipsh*t in his golden years.

No, he was pretty much always one of those. Great pilot, lousy human being.

Not that uncommon in "the greatest generation". I remember on of my grandfather's army buddies from WWII. Won the Bronze Star at Anzio. Nicest guy you'd ever want to meet - as long as you were a white male who didn't disagree with him on anything.